The woman known to history as Catherine de’
Medici was born on the 13th April 1519 in the city of Florence, in Renaissance Italy. Her mother was Madeleine de La Tour d’Auvergne,
Countess of Boulogne, who came from an aristocratic background and was descended from an ancient
and influential French family, with links to the French ruling elite. Her father was Lorenzo de’ Medici, ruler
of Florence from 1516 to 1519 and Duke of Urbino. Unlike his wife, Lorenzo did not come from
an aristocratic family but the Medici family had risen to prominence in the 1430s after
making a fortune in banking and acquiring power by financing several European royal
families. The Medicis promoted the cultural Renaissance
in Florence and went on to rule the city for over 300 years, from 1434 to 1737. Many Medicis, including Catherine, made impressive
marriages and several Medicis were elected as Pope. Catherine’s parents had been married for
a year before her birth, their union had been planned as part of an alliance between King
Francis I of France and Lorenzo’s uncle, Pope Leo X, against their mutual rival Holy
Roman Emperor Maximilian I. As a result of her father’s heritage, Catherine was perceived
as a noblewoman, but not as a member of the upper echelons of the Italian aristocracy. However her family did wield huge power, wealth
and influence - which would be important in securing Catherine an advantageous match when
she reached marrying age. Catherine was an only child and was orphaned
not long after her birth. Her mother died of either puerperal fever,
caused by an infection picked up during childbirth, or the plague only a few days after Catherine’s
birth on the 28th April 1519. Her father died twenty-one days after his
daughter’s birth, possibly from syphilis, on the 4th May 1519 at the Villa Medici at
Careggi in Florence. He was buried in the Medici Chapel of Florence’s
Church of San Lorenzo which was adorned - in true Medici style - with Michelangelo’s
sculpture Pensieroso, which represented the Duke. Lorenzo’s tomb has often been confused with
that of his illustrious grandfather, Lorenzo the Magnificent, which also had a Michelangelo
sculpture. Catherine spent her childhood passing between
various prominent relations, including her paternal grandmother Alfonsina Orsini and,
after she died in 1520, her aunt Clarice de’ Medici, where she was raised along with her
cousins. She was raised as a Roman Catholic and received
an education befitting a noblewoman from nuns in Florence and Rome. In line with the expectation that Catherine
would make an advantageous marriage, possibly to a foreign prince, she would have been taught
to speak fluently in Italian, French and Latin, at the very least. Grand plans for Catherine’s upbringing had
been made by more than just her grandmother and aunt. King Francis I of France had wanted Catherine
to be raised at the French court, no doubt in order to see her married to a French aristocrat
or even one of his own sons. But Pope Leo X blocked this scheme as he planned
to have her marry Ippolito de’ Medici, Lord of Florence. Pope Leo made Catherine Duchess of Urbino
in line with this plan, but then annexed most of the Duchy of Urbino in the name of the
Papal States, reducing her status. After the death of Pope Leo X in 1521, Medici
power in the Vatican was interrupted until Cardinal Giulio de’ Medici was elected as
Pope Clement VII in 1523. It was during this period between the Medici
popes that Catherine’s status as Duchess of Urbino became contentious. The title and lands of the Duke of Urbino
were given to Francesco Maria I della Rovere by Pope Leo’s successor, Adrian VI. The Florentine people continued to refer to
Catherine as duchessina, meaning “the little duchess”, referencing her claim to the Duchy
of Urbino. During this time, Catherine stayed in the
Palazzo Medici Riccardi - the first Medici palace, the occasional workplace of great
artists like Donatello, Michelangelo and Botticelli, and the modern-day seat of local government
in Florence. In 1527 the Medicis were overthrown in Florence
by a faction which opposed Pope Clement’s representative, Cardinal Silvio Passerini. Catherine was taken hostage and moved from
convent to convent. Finally, she found consistency and peace at
Santissima Annuziata delle Murate for three years - a period which she described as “the
happiest of her entire life”. This momentary interlude in a life defined
by political manoeuvrings must have seemed tranquil. However, the city of Florence was not permanently
lost to the Medicis. With an eye on Europe-wide political events
and in order to gain support for the recapture of Florence, Pope Clement crowned the Holy
Roman Emperor and King of Spain, Charles V, in an elaborate and sacred ceremony in the
San Petronio Basilica in Bologna on the 24th February 1530. The coronation aimed to heal the political
and religious divides which had blown up when the mutinous Spanish, German and Italian troops
of Charles V had sacked Rome in 1527. The alliance would also be used against the
threat posed by the Ottoman Turks, who were seeking dominance in Eastern Europe and had
reached Vienna - an important royal city in the Holy Roman Empire - in 1529. Charles V’s military support in Florence
was well rewarded as Charles V was the last Holy Roman Emperor to be awarded the honour
of being crowned by a Pope. The retaking of Florence began in October
1529 and lasted until the city surrendered on 12th August 1530. During the siege, there were calls for Catherine’s
execution and even for her naked exposure and use by the troops for sexual gratification. But this period of siege and her residence
in Santissima Annuziata delle Murate ended for Catherine when Pope Clement called her
to Rome in 1530 in order to find her a husband. While in Rome at the bequest of Pope Clement,
Catherine had many suitors. The most illustrious of her suitors was King
James V of Scotland, who sent the Duke of Albany to arrange the marriage on two separate
occasions - once in April 1530 and again seven months later in November. Although Catherine did not marry the eager
Scottish King, their stories would later become entwined when Catherine helped to raise his
daughter, Mary Queen of Scots. A second influential suitor was Henry, Duke
of Orléans, second son of King Francis I of France and the future King Henry II. Henry belonged to the Valois dynasty which
had ruled France since the 14th century. By early 1533, Henry was openly courting her
and he was to be a fortuitous match for the wealthy but common-born Catherine. Catherine de’ Medici and Henry, Duke of
Orléans, were married at Église Saint-Ferréol les Augustins in Marseille on the 28th October
1533, when Catherine was fourteen. The wedding was an extravagant affair with
a grand display of gift-giving and festivities which went on late into the night. The couple and their distinguished guests
celebrated with dancing and feasting and Henry jousted - his favourite pastime - for his
new wife’s hand. After leaving the ball, the couple consummated
their marriage, apparently under the watch of King Francis I who was determined to see
the union properly joined. That morning the couple were visited and blessed
in their marital bed by Pope Clement. In the first year of marriage, Catherine saw
little of her husband, who openly took mistresses. It was said that Henry was gloomy and introverted
because he had spent four years as a captive in Spain during the formative years of his
youth, but Catherine’s intelligence, wit and keenness to please made favourable impressions
on the ladies of the French Court. However, this favourable start to her life
in France was quickly reversed. The death of her uncle Pope Clement on the
25th September 1534 undermined Catherine’s position and influence at Court. The situation worsened when Pope Clement’s
successor, Alessandro Farnese, broke off the alliance with France and ceased to pay Catherine’s
large dowry. King Francis I apparently lamented Catherine’s
reversal of fortune and the marriage which had once seemed so fortunate by announcing
“The girl has come to me stark naked”. As well as her tenuous position as a now dowry-less
foreigner, Catherine was also under huge pressure to provide the Valois dynasty with the heir
and spare which would ensure the dynasty’s survival. The stakes were even higher in France as under
Salic law, an ancient Frankish civil law code, only males could ascend the throne. Catherine greatly desired a son - a blessing
which would cement her position in France - but in the first ten years of their marriage,
the couple had no children at all. The pressure to conceive built when Henry’s
older brother, the Dauphin of France, Francis, died of a fever in 1536. Rumours began to spread that either Catherine
or the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, had poisoned the Dauphin. Catherine became the sole target of blame
for the lack of a legitimate heir when Henry publicly acknowledged his affair with Philippa
Duci and the birth of his daughter, Diane, in 1537. It was at this time that divorce was discussed
and many clamoured for Catherine to be sent back to Italy. In a period when witch-hunting was reaching
its peak, rumours that Catherine practised witchcraft began to circulate, feeding into
the image of her as the Black Queen which has persisted to today. As a woman’s role was viewed in terms of
her ability to create and sustain life, infertile women were seen as unnatural,and as witches
with the opposite power - that of destroying health, life and fertility. Catherine’s connection with the astrologer
and seer Nostradamus and even more suspicious Ruggeri brothers, who it was believed engaged
in necromancy and the black arts, did little to help Catherine’s reputation. After trying every natural and superstitious
remedy for inducing pregnancy, including drinking mule’s urine, Catherine finally gave birth
to her first child and son, Francis, on the 19th of January 1544. She went on to have a daughter, Elisabeth,
on the 2nd of April 1545 and a further eight children, seven of whom survived infancy. She succeeded in providing the dynasty with
five boys who could inherit the throne - the future Francis II, Louis, the future Charles
IX, the future Henry III, and Francis Duke of Anjou. The future of the Valois dynasty was now secure. , but Catherine’s pregnancies did nothing
to improve her marriage. Her husband was devoted to his favourite mistress,
Diane de Poitiers, who was nineteen years his senior. Catherine’s influence was rooted solely
in her motherhood, as her husband ignored her, and she would later become very skilled
at presenting herself as the devoted mother of future kings and of France itself. The death of King Francis I on the 31st of
March 1547 made Catherine Queen Consort of France. She was crowned in the Basilica of Saint-Denis,
the resting place of many French kings and a former medieval abbey church in northern
Paris, on the 10th of June 1549. But she was to enjoy no political influence
as Queen Consort, besides wielding the nominal power of regent during her husband’s travels
abroad. The days of Catherine’s power and influence
were all still ahead of her. Instead of utilising the wisdom and skill
of his wife, Henry promoted the influence of his mistress, Diane de Poitiers, giving
her the Château of Chenonceau, which Catherine had wanted, and placing her at the centre
of power with the responsibility for giving out patronage. It was even reported by the imperial ambassador
that Henry would sit on Diane’s lap, discuss politics with her and stroke her breasts when
in company. Diane did not see Catherine as a threat, having
already essentially usurped her position and privileges as the wife of the King. Diane actually encouraged Henry to spend time
with Catherine and to sire more legitimate children with her. In 1556 Catherine almost died in childbirth,
the royal surgeons only saved her life in a terrible exchange for the life of one of
her twin girls, Joan who died in the womb, while Victoria survived but only for seven
more weeks. As the King’s physician advised Henry against
having any more children with Catherine, he stopped visiting her and instead spent all
of his time with his long-term mistress, Diane. Catherine would have no more children. Along with her own children, Catherine played
a role in raising Mary, Queen of Scots, daughter of her once-suitor James V of Scotland. Mary’s mother, Mary of Guise, was the sister
of Henry’s boyhood friend Francis, Duke of Guise, and had married King James V of
Scotland in 1538. Mary of Guise ruled Scotland as regent for
her daughter Mary, who had taken the throne when she was less than one week old. Mary, Queen of Scots, lived at the French
Court from the age of five and was promised in marriage to Catherine’s eldest son, the
Dauphin, Francis. Francis and Mary were married on the 24th
of April 1558, when Francis was fifteen years old and Mary was seventeen years old. They would be married for only two years due
to the premature death of Francis. In 1559 Catherine’s eldest daughter, Elisabeth,
became the second among her children to marry. The marriage, like Catherine’s own, was
part of a political alliance. After the death of Catherine’s father, Lorenzo
de’ Medici, in 1492 the balance of power and economic growth of Catherine’s home
country, Italy, collapsed - this combination of wealth and political instability drew in
Italy’s enemies and for over fifty years from 1494 to 1559 the Italian peninsula became
a battleground between the French Valois dynasty, the Habsburgs, the Ottoman Turks and the English. These long Italian Wars, sometimes called
the Habsburg-Valois Wars, were brought to an end on the 3rd to the 4th April 1559, when
Henry II signed the Peace of Cateau-Cambrésis with Philip II of Spain and Elizabeth I of
England. The treaty was sealed with the marriage of
the thirteen-year-old Elisabeth to King Philip II of Spain, a fellow Catholic. The union was celebrated in Paris on the 22nd
of June 1559 with five days of jousting, festivities, balls and masques, a form of courtly entertainment
from Italy, in which participants dance and exchange gifts with their host while in disguise. Despite the lavishness of the entertainments,
the marriage was only a proxy wedding as the couple themselves were not present. Henry took part in the celebratory jousting,
boldly wearing his mistress Diane’s black-and-white colours. He was victorious against his friend the Duke
of Guise and the Duke of Nemours, but was knocked off his saddle by Gabriel de Lorges,
the Earl of Montgomery, in an honourable joust. Insisting on riding out again against Montgomery,
Henry’s face was shattered by Montgomery’s lance. Reeling from the clash, with blood pouring
down his face and large splinters buried deep in his eye and head, Henry was carried away. Catherine, Diane and Francis the Dauphin are
said to have all fainted at the terrible sight. After the splinters were removed from his
eye and brain at the Château de Tournelles, the King lay in a shifting state. Catherine stayed with him, but Diane stayed
away for fear of being expelled by the Queen. Over the next ten days, Henry sat up to dictate
letters and listened to music, but began to lose his sight, speech and reason, finally
dying on the 10th July 1559 at the age of 40. From this day, Catherine adopted the broken
lance as her emblem, inscribed with the words "lacrymae hinc, hinc dolor" meaning "from
this come my tears, my pain", and wore mourning black for the rest of her life in memory of
her husband. Catherine recognised that image cultivation
was an important part of successful kingship and worked to promote an image of herself
as a faithful widow and devoted mother. In 1559, at 40 years old, Catherine took her
first steps into the political spotlight after her husband’s death. She insisted on being called Queen Mother
rather than dowager, which solidified the image of herself she wanted to project - that
of a loving and devoted mother - and the title amplified her closeness to the next monarch
- her son Francis. Francis II, Catherine’s oldest son, became
King of France at the age of fifteen. His coronation was held in Reims on the 21st
September 1559. It was said that the crown was so heavy that
Francis couldn’t hold it up alone and required trusted nobles to help hold it in place on
his head. It was rumoured that Francis was frail and
of ill health. He had married Mary Queen of Scots the year
before and, in what has been called a coup d'etat, Francis the Duke of Guise and his
brother Charles, Cardinal of Lorraine, seized power, moving themselves into the Louvre Palace
with the young couple. The House of Guise were staunch supporters
of the Roman Catholic cause, but after failing to aid the Catholics in Scotland, the old
alliance between Catholic France and Scotland was dissolved, causing the Guises to focus
their Catholic campaign on France. Out of necessity, Catherine worked with the
Guises because she was not guaranteed a role in Francis’s government as he was deemed
old enough to rule alone (in France the royal age of majority was fourteen). Yet she was to wield greater power as the
mother of the King than she had done as the wife of the King. King Francis II’s official acts began with
“This being the good pleasure of the Queen, my lady-mother, and I also approving of every
opinion that she holdeth, am content and command that…” . Catherine exploited her new-found authority. She forced Diane de Poitiers to hand over
the crown jewels and vacate the Château de Chenonceau, before proceeding to undo all
of Diane’s building work there. All those at the court and in government who
had been patronised by Diane were quickly replaced, including Jean Bertrand, Keeper
of the Seals of France, who was succeeded by chancellor François Olivier who had been
dismissed by Diane a few years previously. As the Guise brothers and the new French government
set to policy-making, the issue of the religious conflict was becoming desperate. Religious divisions had grown across the whole
of Europe as the Protestant Reformation, ignited by Martin Luther’s criticism of the Roman
Catholic Church, unleashed a complex political and religious storm which engulfed the whole
of Europe, and France in particular. The Valois royal family were Catholic but
France had a growing Protestant population and its neighbours, including Great Britain,
the Netherlands, Scandinavia and parts of Germany, were turning to Protestantism. The Huguenots were a group of French Protestants
who followed the reformed or Calvinist Protestant faith; they made up almost 10% of the French
population and practised their religion publicly. The Huguenots were vocal in their criticism
of the Catholic Church, denouncing the Pope as a tyrant holding false sway over God’s
creation. Religious violence was played out on the streets
of France - lynchings and murders had religious motivations, churches were sacked, sacred
texts were destroyed and the bodies of saints were dug up and burned. Clearly, the government had to do something,
but the policies of the Guise brothers did not at all fit with Catherine’s preferred
course of action. The Guise brothers began persecuting Protestants,
but Catherine adopted a more moderate stance and spoke out against the persecutions. Although she had been raised as a Roman Catholic
- and had been related to several Popes - the depth of her religious conviction was questioned
as she prioritised peace over religious principles. Whether her conciliatory policy was rooted
in her lack of religious conviction, her belief in freedom of worship, desire for peace at
any cost, or - more likely - her political acumen, Catherine succeeded in crafting a
place for herself in the political sphere, in opposition to the Guises. The hardline stance taken up by the Guise
brothers fuelled the conflict. The Huguenots looked to Antoine de Bourbon,
King of Navarre, and then to his brother Louis de Bourbon, Prince of Condé, for support
to topple the Guises. With the rise of religious violence, the royal
court was moved to the fortified Château of Amboise in the Loire Valley in Central
France. The Duke of Guise then launched a surprise
attack on the Huguenots in the woods nearby and killed many, including the Huguenots commander
La Renaudie. As Catherine and her Court watched, many of
the rebels were slain, drowned in the river or were strung up around the battlements. Catherine found an ally for her strategies
for defending the law in the face of the growing anarchy when Chancellor Michel de l'Hôpital
was appointed in June 1560. Neither Catherine nor the new Chancellor agreed
with the practice pursued by the Guise brothers of punishing Protestants who were peaceful
and worshipped privately. Catherine and Chancellor de l'Hôpital put
their policy of conciliation to an assembly of the privy council at Fontainebleau on the
20th August 1560. Historians have seen this stroke of effective
diplomacy as an early example of Catherine’s talent for statesmanship, as she set her policy
for peace in opposition to the Guise brothers. Meanwhile the Prince of Condé’s army began
attacking towns in the south of France in the autumn of 1560. Catherine ordered the Prince of Condé to
the royal court and when he arrived had him imprisoned, tried for offences against the
Crown, and sentenced to death. His life was saved by the timely death of
the King - the result of an ear infection or abscess in his brain. Showing her astuteness, Catherine recognised
that her son’s death was imminent and made a pact with Antoine de Bourbon, a Huguenot
leader, to the benefit of her second son, Charles. Antoine de Bourbon agreed to renounce his
right to the regency of the future king, Charles IX, in return for the release of his brother. So, when Francis II died on the 5th December
1560, Catherine was appointed Governor of France by the Privy Council. For the first time, she was to have sweeping
powers. After her rise into the government, Catherine
wrote a letter to her daughter Elisabeth, expressing her views about power: “My principal
aim is to have the honour of God before my eyes in all things and to preserve my authority,
not for myself, but for the conservation of this kingdom and for the good of all your
brothers.” The coronation of Charles IX saw Catherine’s
influence solidified. The nine-year-old Charles IX is said to have
cried through his coronation. Catherine kept him close during the start
of his reign, reportedly sleeping in his chamber and certainly presiding over his council,
policy-making, state business and patronage. Charles was not just vulnerable due to his
youth - like his older brother, he was not a healthy child. The Venetian ambassador reported that Charles
was “an admirable child…though he is not robust. He favours physical exercises that is too
violent for his health, for he suffers from shortness of breath.” The frailty of the boy on the throne was compounded
by the volatile situation in France at the time. Catherine seized the reins of power for her
frail son, but she never controlled the whole country as France was engulfed in a civil
war. Large swathes of the country were ruled by
noblemen and religious divides impeded political power. Catherine summoned the church leaders from
both sides of the religious divide to solve their doctrinal differences. Leaders of the Catholic and Protestant churches
in France met, on Catherine’s instructions, to find a compromise between their religious
convictions. Despite Catherine’s optimism, the Colloquy
of Poissy - as this meeting was called - failed and on the 13th October 1561 the meeting dissolved
itself without her permission. Politics had blinded Catherine to reality
- she had failed to understand the religious divides which were impeding the functioning
of political power. She believed that getting the religious leaders
to agree would resolve everything and completely underestimated the strength of religious convictions. In an attempt to make a success of her conciliation
policy, Catherine issued the Edict of Saint-Germain in January 1562. The Edict aimed to promote tolerance between
the religious groups and pacify the Protestants. However, the Massacre of Vassy on the 1st
of March 1562 undid all her efforts. The Duke of Guise and his men attacked worshipping
Huguenots in a barn at Vassy, killing 74 and wounding 104. Guise was treated as a hero by the Parisian
population. The Huguenots called for revenge. For the next thirty years France flitted between
states of outright civil war and an uneasy truce. Within a month of the infamous Massacre of
Vassy, Huguenots Louis de Bourbon and Admiral Gaspard de Coligny had raised an army of 1,800
and formed a useful alliance with England. The Duke of Guise’s hardline policy towards
the Huguenots fuelled Huguenot victories, who began seizing town after town. Catherine met with Admiral Coligny to find
a compromise, but the talks reached a stalemate and Catherine resorted to meeting violence
with violence. The royal army struck swiftly, laying siege
to Huguenot-held Rouen. Catherine visited the field herself, against
the warnings of her advisors, and attended the deathbed of Huguenot leader Antoine de
Bourbon, King of Navarre, when he was fatally wounded. But the Catholic triumph was short-lived as
on the 18th February 1563 a spy, Poltrot de Méré, killed the Duke of Guise with an arquebus,
the first gun fired from the shoulder and resembling a rifle, at the siege of Orléans,
triggering a blood feud amongst the aristocratic families on either side of the religious divide. Catherine was delighted at Guise’s death
as his hand was removed from her son’s government - she reportedly told the Venetian ambassador
that “If Monsieur de Guise had perished sooner, peace would have been achieved more
quickly.” Finally, the war was brought to an end on
the 19th March 1563 with the signing of the Edict of Amboise, also known as the Edict
of Pacification. But France’s problems were not over as the
English retained a powerbase on the French coast, so Catherine rallied both Huguenot
and Catholic forces to retake Le Havre from the English. These successes did not change the fundamental
fact that Catherine’s power was not her own. On the 17th of August 1563 it was declared
at the Parliament of Rouen that Charles IX had now reached majority age and could rule
alone. But Charles continued to show little interest
in the technicalities of ruling and Catherine continued to steer him. Intent on reviving loyalty to the crown after
a tumultuous period, Catherine took a long tour of France with Charles from January 1564
to May 1565. She aimed to bolster the Edict of Amboise
- the hard-won peace - and promote unity and to this end she held talks with Jeanne d’Albret,
the Protestant Queen Regent of Navarre, wife of the late Antoine de Bourbon and mother
of King Henry III of Navarre. But her attempts at unity were not received
with praise from everyone - when visiting her daughter Elisabeth, her son-in-law, the
devoutly Catholic Philip of Spain, refused to see her and instead sent the Duke of Alba
to tell her to tackle heresy more brutally - advice which Catherine ignored. Catherine’s conciliatory policies were failing
to bring the religious conflict to an end. On the 27th of September 1567 the Huguenots
attempted to ambush the King - an event known as the Surprise of Meaux - and the civil war
continued. The French Court fled to Paris to escape the
encroaching violence. Bloodshed and civil unrest continued well
after another peace settlement was agreed - the Peace of Longjumeau - on the 22nd - 23rd
March 1568. The Surprise of Meaux marked a turning point
in Catherine’s policy toward the Huguenots. She finally abandoned her policy of compromise
for one of repression once the Huguenots had targeted the King. In June 1568 she told the Venetian ambassador
that the Huguenots were traitors and praised the Duke of Alba’s reign of terror in the
Netherlands, where Calvinists and rebels were executed in their thousands. The royalist army forced the Huguenots to
retreat to the fortified stronghold of La Rochelle on the west coast, where Jeanne d’Albret
and her fifteen-year-old son Henry of Navarre joined them. Around this time Jeanne wrote to Catherine,
expressing her desire to die rather than abandon her God and religion. Catherine, who had always underestimated the
religious conviction of the Huguenots, decried Jeanne as “the most shameless woman in the
world”. Catherine saw Jeanne’s decision to rebel
as a deliberate dynastic threat, rather than a move fuelled by religious conviction. But, despite Catherine’s anger, fighting
on was no longer an option. On the 8th of August 1570, the Peace of Saint-Germain-en-Laye
was signed because the royal army had run out of money. Despite Catherine’s decision to pursue a
more hard-line policy, this latest peace actually conceded wider toleration to the Huguenots
than ever before. Whether this was the result of the throne’s
weak negotiating position or part of Catherine’s old and preferred conciliatory policy is unclear. With a temporary peace in place, Catherine
sought to bolster Valois interests and power by setting up several grand dynastic marriages. In 1570, King Charles IX married Elisabeth
of Austria (daughter of Maximilian II, Holy Roman Emperor) in a proxy wedding in Speyer
in modern-day Germany. Catherine also sought a match between one
of her sons and England’s Elizabeth I, but this idea never took off. She worked to replenish the family’s connection
with Philip II of Spain after his wife and her oldest daughter, Elisabeth, died in childbirth
in 1568. She planned to marry her youngest daughter,
Margaret, to Philip and also sought a union between Margaret and Henry of Navarre, the
son of Jeanne d’Albret, to combine Valois and Bourbon interests. However, Margaret was secretly involved with
Henry of Guise, son of the late Duke of Guise, which resulted in a beating from her mother,
Catherine, and her brother, the King, when they found out. Catherine succeeded in luring Jeanne to Court
and convinced her to agree to a marriage between Margaret and Jeanne’s son Henry, with the
caveat that Henry be permitted to remain a Huguenot. The wedding that took place on the 18th of
August 1572 at Notre Dame, Paris, was overshadowed somewhat by the recent death of Jeanne, who
was taken ill upon her arrival in Paris - it was said that Catherine had murdered her with
poisoned gloves. The rumour that Catherine had killed Jeanne
d’Albret was not the most damaging rumour about her circulating that summer in 1572. Catherine’s reputation was to be stained
by the events of the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre which began only days after her daughter
Margaret’s wedding. On the 21st of August 1572, three days after
the royal wedding which had brought influential Huguenots to Paris, Admiral Coligny (the Huguenot
leader) was shot while walking home from the Louvre. A smoking arquebus was discovered in a window
but the culprit escaped. Coligny was treated by surgeon Ambroise Paré,
who removed the bullet from his elbow and amputated a damaged finger with a pair of
scissors. Catherine made a tearful visit to Coligny
- despite apparently receiving the news of this attack without any display of emotion
- and promised revenge on his attacker. Several historians have blamed Catherine for
the attack on Coligny, others have pointed to the Guise family or to a Spanish-Papal
plot to end Coligny’s influence on the King. Whatever the truth, the bloodbath that followed
grew quickly out of control. Two days later on the 23rd of August 1572
the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre broke out. Roman Catholic mobs murdered Protestant Huguenots
en masse. Innocents were targeted, including children,
the elderly and pregnant women, bodies were thrown into the River Seine and corpses were
hung in the streets. Paintings of the carnage on the streets of
Paris show unimaginable horrors and often, such as the painting by Protestant painter
François Dubois, the black-clad figure of Catherine looking coldly upon the violence. It was said that Catherine was party to Charles
IX’s decision to “kill them all!”, as he aimed to strike first against an expected
Huguenot revenge attack for the shooting of Coligny. The slaughter lasted for a week and spread
outwards from Paris across much of France, where it lasted into the autumn - becoming
a season of slaughter, as historian Jules Michelet put it. In total approximately 3,000 Protestants were
killed in Paris and a further 70,000 across the whole of France. After the bloodshed finally abated in Paris,
Catherine’s reputation was in tatters but she was not downcast. Her son-in-law Henry of Navarre knelt at an
altar as a Roman Catholic on the 29th of September, having converted to avoid death, and (as the
ambassadors reported) Catherine had laughed triumphantly at the sight. The legend of the wicked Italian, the Black
Queen, spread from this moment. She was accused of being a disciple of Machiavelli,
of using the tactics of his treatise The Prince to remove all of her enemies in one deadly
blow. It was a well-targeted criticism, given that
Machiavelli had dedicated The Prince to Catherine’s father Lorenzo. The Huguenots responded to the massacre with
propaganda - a tactic made doubly effective by their mastery of the relatively new art
of printing with a printing press. Within weeks propaganda papers were produced
and distributed en masse and Catherine was their natural target. In 1575 a particularly influential manuscript
by an anonymous author, titled Discours merveilleux de la vie, actions, et déportements de Catherine
de Médicis, blamed Catherine for the massacre and denounced her as the epitome of female
evil. The manuscript became a bestseller and triggered
an avalanche of propaganda and accusations against Catherine. Her reputation as a devoted Queen Mother was
permanently blackened and old prejudices against her as a duplicitous Florentine and power-hungry
Medici resurfaced. The black clothes she wore as an ongoing sign
of her loyalty to her late husband were turned into the costume of an angel of death. The document had achieved its aim of preventing
Catherine from consolidating her power after the death of her second son, Charles IX. Some even called for her to be put on trial
for the murder of the Huguenots. The debate over the level of responsibility
Catherine held for the horrific events of St. Bartholomew’s Day is still ongoing. Some historians have argued that Catherine
perhaps ordered the assassination of several Protestant leaders while they were together
in Paris for the wedding, but that the scale and unpredictability of the actions of the
mob could not have been ordered or controlled by anyone. Yet Catherine had almost always opted for
a conciliatory path - she wanted unity and peace for the sake of political stability
and the longevity of the Valois dynasty. She had organised the wedding between her
own daughter and Henry of Navarre and had invited prominent Huguenots to the celebrations
in Paris. It seems unlikely that she would then set
out to ruin this opportunity for unity, which she herself had created, by calling forth
a violent mob to massacre the Huguenots. And she continued to act in line with her
policy of conciliation well after the massacre and its aftermath. But the Protestants - and anyone who had become
tired of Catherine’s moderate policies - remained convinced that she was to blame for the massacre. As with the painting by Protestant painter
François Dubois and the Discours merveilleux manuscript, the criticism of Catherine would
play out loudly on the public stage and in the realm of the arts - and Catherine would
not take it lying down. Catherine believed, as many Renaissance princes
and scholars did, that power depended as much on cultural display as on force. She had inherited the Medici family's taste
for fine art and became a patroness of the arts, bolstering French culture as much as
her family had in Florence. In an age of declining loyalty to the monarchy,
she used the arts to increase the prestige of the Valois dynasty, launching an artistic
patronage programme which lasted for three decades. She tapped into the rising popularity of portraiture
by inviting resident portrait artists to the French Court and commissioning thousands of
portraits of her family. Although she spent enormous sums of money
on the arts, there was little permanent legacy of her work. The festivals and entertainments she arranged
and the school of artists she patronised did not live on after she was gone. Only her love for architecture left a lasting
mark, including several restored royal palaces, two new palaces she had built in Paris - the
Tuileries and the Hôtel de la Reine - as well as the Italian Renaissance-style tomb
in which she and her husband would lay. Two years after the events of the St. Bartholomew’s
Day Massacre, another dynastic crisis threatened to unseat Catherine and the Valois line. King Charles IX died at the age of 23 of tuberculosis,
apparently calling out Catherine’s name with his last dying breath. Leaving no heir, Charles was succeeded by
his brother Henry, Duke of Anjou. Henry was recalled from the Polish Lithuanian
Commonwealth, where he had been elected King the year before. Abandoning this throne for the crown of France,
Henry came to the throne as an experienced and grown man - unlike his two older brothers. Although Catherine was grieved by Charles’
death, writing to Henry that she was “grief-stricken to have witnessed such a scene and the love
which he showed me at the end”, it was said that Henry was her favourite son. She added in her letter to him that her “only
consolation is to see you here soon, as your kingdom requires, and in good health, for
if I were to lose you, I would have myself buried alive with you.” Despite the advantages of experience, maturity
and health, Henry proved to be as equally fitful as his brothers when it came to displaying
interest in the tasks of government. Henry’s disinterest in ruling was perhaps
rooted in his religious devotion - he showed much more interest in displays of piety, pilgrimage
and flagellation than in the politics of ruling. Just as Francis and Charles had, Henry relied
heavily on Catherine when it came to the practicalities of ruling. So even though Catherine did not have the
formal powers of a regent, as she had when Charles had ruled as a minor, she continued
to hold huge power and influence over the government. Henry’s coronation was held at Reims Cathedral
on the 13th of February 1575 and two days later he married Louise de Lorraine-Vaudémont,
his choice thwarting Catherine's plans for a political marriage to a foreign princess. This marriage was a childless one, which had
deep consequences for Catherine’s family. Henry III’s heir was his younger brother
Francis, Duke of Alençon, but instead of fulfilling his duties as Dauphin Francis exploited
the anarchy of the civil wars to his own advantage. Despite Catherine summoning him for a six-hour
telling off about his subversive behaviour in March 1578, Francis would not be stopped
and the Valois dynasty looked set to crumble. Francis allied with the Protestant princes
against the Crown and his brother, Henry III, and besieged Paris in the spring of 1576. The resulting Peace of Monsieur, Francis’s
nickname, and Edict of Beaulieu was granted by Catherine on the 6th May 1576 and represented
a huge concession to Huguenot demands. Protestants were now permitted to worship
in public, build their own churches and were guaranteed representation in the strongly
Catholic Parlement, a guarantee which would later be rescinded by the States-General of
Blois and cause the return of Henry of Navarre to his Calvinist religion and to leading armed
rebellion. There was also to be compensation for the
families of the victims of the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre. It was said that Francis forced Catherine
and Henry to pass the act. Many Catholics were extremely opposed to these
concessions, and particularly to the recognition given to Protestant political organisations,
and formed their own political organisation called the Catholic League in protest. As well as deepening religious grievances,
the peace treaty also failed to bring an end to Francis’s dangerous behaviour. Francis’s army launched a disastrous intervention
in the Low Countries in the middle of 1584. But in June of that year, Francis died of
consumption. Despite their differences, Catherine then
wrote: “I am so wretched to live long enough to see so many people die before me, although
I realize that God's will must be obeyed, that He owns everything, and that He lends
us only for as long as He likes the children whom He gives us.” The death of her youngest son was a dynastic
calamity - she had no more living sons to inherit the throne (and any surviving daughters
were not eligible to rule due to their gender). The Huguenot King Henry III of Navarre now
became heir presumptive to the French Crown. Although Catherine had wisely married her
youngest daughter Margaret to Henry of Navarre, she could rely on her daughter Margaret little
more than she could rely on her troublesome son Francis, Duke of Alençon. Margaret had returned to the French court
without her husband in 1582 and Catherine was overheard berating her daughter for taking
lovers. After being sent back to her husband, Margaret
fled again in 1585, retreated to her property at Agen and begged her mother for money. Catherine sent only enough money for food
in an attempt to force Margaret to return home. But Margaret moved on to the fortress of Carlat
and took another lover, a nobleman called d'Aubiac. Catherine demanded that Henry of Navarre act
to resolve his marital difficulties before shame was brought upon them all, and in October
1586 he locked Margaret up in the Château d'Usso. D'Aubiac was executed, though not, as Catherine
had wished, in front of Margaret. Catherine cut Margaret out of her will and
never saw her again. Catherine’s control over the Crown had reduced
since the reign of her elder two sons, but she still functioned as Henry’s chief executive
of government and as a travelling diplomat. She travelled widely across the kingdom, enforcing
his authority and trying to head off war. In 1578 at the age of 59, she embarked on
an eighteen-month journey around the south of France to meet Huguenot leaders. Her efforts won Catherine new respect from
the French people and on her return to Paris in 1579 she was greeted outside the city by
the Parliament and large crowds. The Venetian ambassador, Gerolamo Lipomanno,
wrote of Catherine: “She is an indefatigable princess, born to tame and govern a people
as unruly as the French: they now recognize her merits, her concern for unity and are
sorry not to have appreciated her sooner.” Catherine herself, however, was under no illusions
about the desperate situation facing the Valois dynasty and on the 25th November of 1579 she
wrote to the King, “You are on the eve of a general revolt. Anyone who tells you differently is a liar.” As Catherine had predicted, many leading Roman
Catholics were appalled by her attempts to appease the Huguenots, and in particular by
the Edict of Beaulieu which had furthered Protestant rights. Local Catholic leagues were formed with the
aim of protecting the Catholic religion - and Catholic privileges - from rising Protestantism. After the death of Francis the Dauphin in
1584, the Duke of Guise assumed the leadership of the Catholic League in order to block the
succession of Huguenot Henry of Navarre and put Henry's Catholic uncle Cardinal Charles
de Bourbon on the throne instead. Guise recruited powerful Catholic princes,
nobles and bishops, formed a union with Spain under the Treaty of Joinville, and readied
for war against the “heretics”. By 1585, King Henry III had to face the reality
of war against the Catholic League, who were stirring up the civil war once more. Catherine apparently counselled Henry on the
delicate nature of the situation but also warned him that “peace is carried on a stick”. She wrote to her favourite son to “Take
care, especially about your person. There is so much treachery about that I die
of fear.” Trapped in a difficult situation, Henry was
unable to fight both the Catholics and the Protestants at the same time, both of whom
had larger and better resourced armies than his own. Henry decided to initially seek peace with
the Catholics and on the 7th of July 1585 signed the Treaty of Nemours, agreeing to
meet all of the League's demands, even paying its troops. Then, driven by his religious convictions,
Henry retreated into hiding to fast and pray, taking with him his personal bodyguard, a
loyal force known as the Forty-Five, and leaving Catherine to find a resolution to what was
quickly becoming a constitutional crisis. The Valois monarchy had lost control of the
country. To make matters worse, a Europe-wide Catholic
backlash against the Protestants was on the rise in 1587. The instability in France forced Henry III
and Catherine to refuse assistance to England after the execution of Mary Queen of Scots
on the 8th February 1587 caused fury amongst the Catholic world and the Spanish prepared
to launch its Armada against England. Recognising the vulnerability of royal power
in France, the Spanish ambassador apparently told King Philip II of Spain that “the abscess
was about to burst”. The Catholic League honoured their treaty
with the Spanish and seized control of much of northern France to allow the Spanish Armada
access to French ports. With his rule completely undermined by the
Catholic League and widespread religious divisions, Henry then made several mistakes. Seeing that Paris was vulnerable, Henry hired
Swiss troops to help him defend the city and himself, but the Parisians took it upon themselves
to defend the city and built barricades in the streets on the 12th of May 1588. They refused to take orders from Henry and
announced that they would take orders only from the Duke of Guise. Catherine reportedly forced her way through
the barricades to Mass, the people acquiescing to her passing, and then, as chronicler L'Estoile
reported, cried all through lunch. She later wrote to statesman and future chancellor
Pomponne de Bellièvre, “Never have I seen myself in such trouble or with so little light
by which to escape.” Acting upon his mother’s sage advice, Henry
fled Paris just in time and signed the Act of Union on the 15th of June 1588, giving
into the League’s latest demands to give himself the chance to fight again another
day. Then Henry made his second mistake. On the 8th of September 1588 Henry dismissed
all of his ministers without warning, as the French Court gathered for a meeting of the
Estates. Atypically, he had not conferred with Catherine
about this decision, and she was kept in the dark about the events while she suffered from
a lung infection. Henry’s mistake, and the even greater one
which followed, effectively ended Catherine’s days of power and the Valois dynasty. At the meeting of the Estates, Henry thanked
Catherine for everything she had done, calling her Mother of the King and Mother of the State. Then on the 23rd of December 1588 Henry invited
the Duke of Guise to visit him at the Château de Blois. Again without conferring with Catherine, Henry
acted to resolve all of the problems facing him and made his third great mistake. As Guise entered the King's chamber for the
proposed meeting, the Forty-Five - Henry’s bodyguard - stabbed Guise to death, symbolically
at the foot of the King's bed. Simultaneously, Henry’s men captured eight
members of the Guise family - including the Duke of Guise's brother and the Cardinal of
Guise, Louis II, who was later hacked to death in the palace dungeons. Once the murders were complete, Henry finally
shared his decisions with Catherine, begged her for forgiveness and excused his brash
and violent scheme as an attempt to prevent Guise doing the same to him. Although Catherine's initial reaction to these
events cannot be known, her son’s actions had certainly not reflected her own cautious
and shrewd diplomacy. On Christmas Day she prayed with a friar and
lamented, “Oh, wretched man! What has he done? ... Pray for him ... I see him rushing towards
his ruin.” When she visited her old friend Cardinal de
Bourbon on the 1st of January 1589, her promise that he would be freed soon was met with the
Cardinal’s derision as he responded, “Your words, Madam, have led us all to this butchery.” Catherine died only a few days later on the
5th of January 1589 at the age of 69. It is likely that she died from pleurisy,
an inflammation on the lungs - the condition which had kept her bed-bound in December and
which had perhaps encouraged her son to move against the Duke of Guise without conferring
with her first. It was generally believed that Catherine’s
life had been shortened by the stress and by her anger at her son’s rash actions. As Paris was still held by enemies of the
Crown, Catherine could not be buried there with her husband. Instead, she was initially buried at the Saint-Sauveur
de Blois Church, in Blois, near the Château Royal de Blois where she had died. Her body was later moved to the Basilica Cathedral
of Saint-Denis, in northern Paris - the traditional resting place for French monarchs of the period
- and placed next to her husband, Henry II. This reinterment was arranged by Henry II’s
illegitimate daughter with Philippa Duci, Diane de France, Duchess of Angoulême. The tomb of Henry and Catherine - an elaborate
temple-like structure with four statues representing the Cardinal Virtues of prudence, justice,
fortitude and temperance - was desecrated during the French Revolution in October 1793,
like those of many other Kings and Queens of France. However the tomb was saved by archaeologist
Alexandre Lenoir and preserved at the Museum of French Monuments. During the Second Bourbon Restoration between
1815 and1830, the tomb was returned to the Basilica of Saint-Denis. Catherine was not outlived by her son for
very long, as Henry III, was stabbed to death by Jacques Clément eight months after Catherine’s
initial burial. When he was killed, Henry had been besieging
Paris with Henry of Navarre, who went on to succeed him as King Henry IV of France. The death of Catherine’s last son represented
the end of almost three centuries of Valois rule and brought the House of Bourbon to power. Catherine had outlived all of her children,
except Henry, who died only months later, and Margaret, who she had disowned. King Henry IV later said of Catherine, his
mother-in-law and enemy: “what could a woman do, left by the death of her husband with
five little children on her arms, and two families of France who were thinking of grasping
the crown—our own and the Guises? Was she not compelled to play strange parts
to deceive first one and then the other, in order to guard, as she did, her sons, who
successively reigned through the wise conduct of that shrewd woman? I am surprised that she never did worse.” Catherine had risen to become the most powerful
woman in 16th-century Europe, born into the prominent Medici family - then the rulers
of Florence and famous patrons of the arts, she rose to become the Queen of France by
marriage to King Henry II, and wielded immense power as the Queen Mother of three French
kings, Francis II, Charles IX and Henry III, the last French King of the Valois dynasty. But her legacy has been mired by attitudes
towards powerful women and foreigners, and by the controversies which coincided with
her time as the power behind the French Crown. The complexity of the civil and religious
wars which her three sons ruled through, make assessing her difficult. Catherine’s influence over her sons, their
governments and their policy-making made her an easy target for blame. The blame she carried, whether justly or not,
for the persecutions carried out under her sons’ rule, and especially the St. Bartholomew’s
Day Massacre of 1572 when thousands of Huguenots were killed, tainted her memory. Catherine has been remembered as the Black
Queen, as a follower of Machiavelli’s cut-throat political theories, rather than as a Queen
Mother who pursued policies of conciliation, patronised the arts and, above all, worked
to save the Valois dynasty. Although Catherine’s ruthlessness is not
a fabrication of historians - as it comes through clearly in her letters and in the
words of those who knew her - there is much more to her story. Like many female rulers before and after her,
she has been flattened out by history, made into a two-dimensional character, as her moniker,
the Black Queen, shows, while the complexities of her character and the situation are ignored. Her authority was hugely limited by the effects
of the civil wars - and in the context of the political and religious turmoil, her policies
appear to simply be desperate measures to keep the Valois monarchy on the throne, from
her policy of conciliation with the Huguenots and marriage of her own daughter to the Huguenot
leader Henry of Navarre, to her patronage of the arts in an attempt to glorify the monarchy. Without Catherine, it seems unlikely that
her sons would have held onto the throne in their lifetimes. What do you think of Catherine de’ Medici? Was she the Black Queen that history has remembered
her as or was she the devoted mother and politically astute woman which she hoped to be remembered
as? Please let us know in the comment section,
and in the meantime, thank you very much for watching.
